Nature & Landscapes (4/43)

Among the first things Madame Walska planted after purchasing Lotusland was; cacti and succulents. HM story on Lotusland botanical garden in Santa Barbara, Calif.. Ganna Walska, pictured, foreground, turned the Montecito estate she purchased in 1941 into gardens called 'Lotusland'. Two decades after the Polish soprano's death in 1984, her garden remains the horticultural Wonderland she envisioned in the years she was single-mindedly ordering workmen to lever giant boulders into half a dozen...more »

Among the first things Madame Walska planted after purchasing Lotusland was; cacti and succulents. HM story on Lotusland botanical garden in Santa Barbara, Calif.. Ganna Walska, pictured, foreground, turned the Montecito estate she purchased in 1941 into gardens called 'Lotusland'. Two decades after the Polish soprano's death in 1984, her garden remains the horticultural Wonderland she envisioned in the years she was single-mindedly ordering workmen to lever giant boulders into half a dozen new positions and selling her jewels-or so legend has it-to finance one more shipment of rareplants. A performer to the core, Walska, born Hanna Puacz in 1887, always intended her work to be admired, stipulating in her will that Lotusland's grounds be open to visitors. (Tours, for which reservations are required, are offered from mid February to mid-November.) Once inside the estate's pink walls, it doesn't take a visitor long to realize that the diva didn't so much retire from the stage as bring it with her. Set against a backdrop of Montecito's rugged mountains, Walska's 37 acres are divided into more than a dozen gardens, each a seemingly separate world.(*ED NOTE: it is not 'Lotus' season....they have HO photo is needed)..« less